If you’re disappointed with the return on investment from your website, you’re hardly alone. A website that costs more to build, maintain and host than it generates in new business is a liability. It’s not working for you, but against you.
As advertising tools and business investments, most websites totally bomb. Why? Because their Internet marketing strategy sucks. Search engine optimization and website promotion are public relations, sales and marketing… not design. Very few web ‘designers’ posess the social networking skills required to market a business effectively online without the assistance of an Internet marketing consultant or SEO professional on their marketing team.

Here’s the part that gets me. If a website fails to produce a return on investment, most clients are satisfied with the pathetic excuse that they are ‘building a web presence’. If it was a print ad campaign through an ad agency or publication the same business owner or executive would fire the agency or pull their ads without a thought if they failed to bring a return. Why has failure become so acceptable in Internet marketing? To be worth a damn, marketing must produce positive arbitrage — that is, it has to generate more dollars than you invest in it.

Let’s face it; the industry actually rewards failure. Most web designers and even internet marketers have no skin in the game. They get paid the same whether your site delivers a return on investment or not. Attractive design is sexy to look at, but even award-winning web design doesn’t guarantee traffic, sales and leads or cash flow (except for the design firm :-). In fact, the more expensive the design, the heavier the losses in most cases.

Botttom line: When it comes to Internet marketing, the design is only appreciated by your visitors after search results send them to your site. Who cares about feel good terms like ‘developing web presence’ or ‘mind share’. The only thing that’s going to put dollars in the bank is market share. Your website only has any value when you’re making money from resulting leads and sales.

If your internet marketing sucks, fix it! Convert your website from a liability into a powerful asset.

Cole Wiebe
Vancouver SEO